Rectangle

Rectangle is a free, open-source macOS utility that brings keyboard-driven window snapping and tiling to the Mac — capabilities Apple's own window manager has historically left to third parties.

What is Rectangle?

Rectangle is a window management app for macOS, built by Ryan Hanson, that lets you snap, resize, and arrange application windows using customizable keyboard shortcuts or by dragging windows to screen edges. It runs entirely in the menu bar, has no subscription, and costs nothing.

If you've ever come from Windows or a Linux tiling environment and found yourself reaching instinctively for a snap shortcut that doesn't exist, Rectangle is the first app you install. Within five minutes of your first launch, muscle memory kicks in and you stop thinking about window placement altogether.

What does Rectangle do best?

Rectangle excels at fast, frictionless keyboard tiling — halves, thirds, quarters, two-thirds, fullscreen, center, and more, all reachable without lifting your hands from the keyboard. The defaults are sensible; the shortcuts are fully remappable; and the app stays invisible until you need it.

A few things that separate it from rolling your own System Preferences shortcuts:

• Edge snapping: drag a window to any screen edge or corner and it snaps to the corresponding position, just like Windows 11's Snap Assist — but without the overlay UI.
• Almost-maximize: the "almost maximize" shortcut leaves a configurable margin so windows don't feel glued to the screen — genuinely useful on a large display.
• Multi-monitor awareness: throw a window to the next or previous display with a single keystroke, with its size preserved.
• Snap areas on drag: configurable colored highlights appear at screen edges during a drag, so mouse-first users aren't left out.

I use the left-half and right-half shortcuts at least fifty times a day. They have become as automatic as Cmd-C.

Is Rectangle free?

Rectangle is completely free to download and use — no trial period, no feature gating, no account required. The source code is publicly available on GitHub under the LGPL license. There is a paid sibling app called Rectangle Pro that adds gap/padding controls, window arrangement macros, and more advanced tiling layouts, but the free version handles the vast majority of daily workflows without any limitation.

For most users, the free tier is all they will ever need. Power users who want Magnet-style layouts with padding, or who want to save and restore named window arrangements, should evaluate Rectangle Pro — but start with free first.

Who should use Rectangle?

Rectangle is the right tool for anyone who works across more than two windows simultaneously and resents time spent dragging window edges by hand. Developers context-switching between an editor, a terminal, and a browser; writers keeping a source document alongside their draft; analysts arranging spreadsheets and dashboards — all benefit immediately.

It is particularly compelling if you are migrating from Windows and miss Snap, or if you tried Magnet (paid, $7.99) and wondered whether you needed to spend money. Rectangle does almost everything Magnet does, for free. Other alternatives worth knowing: Mosaic offers more visual layout-building; Moom adds per-app saved positions; Amethyst goes full automatic tiling (think i3wm). Rectangle sits at the sweet spot — manual, keyboard-first, zero fuss.

What are the best Rectangle alternatives?

The closest direct competitor is Magnet — polished, App Store-distributed, and functionally similar at its core, but paid. Moom ($9.99) adds per-application saved layouts and a popover UI that some users prefer over pure keyboard shortcuts. Amethyst is the right choice if you want fully automatic tiling rather than on-demand snapping. For users already deep in the Raycast ecosystem, Raycast's built-in window management covers the basics without a separate install — but Rectangle's keyboard shortcut coverage is still broader and more configurable.

If budget is zero and you want reliable, actively maintained snapping, Rectangle is the default recommendation. I have been using it daily for over a year on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs without a single crash.